globe trotting: taiwan

several weeks ago, i was talking to my mother on the phone about her upcoming plans to visit taiwan. during our conversation i mentally counted the years it had been since i had last gone with her and spent time with my relatives. it came out to be nearly ten years. i counted again. could it really have been that long?

the years really do go by with a blink of the eye.

so i did what i should have done several years ago. i invited myself to go along.

i had the best time ever.

the food. the family. everything.

here are some photos from my trip. it appears that i forgot to take pictures of taipei, which has become quite the city. as for the food, i think i'll have to save those photos for an entry of their own. most of the pictures below are from outside taipei.

a six person bicycle. loads of fun.

felt tissue cases revisited

last month i posted about felt tissue holders that my friend scrappybug made using a martha stewart tutorial.  i decided to make some with a twist- i added an elastic strap so that they could fit over the sun visor in our car.

to do so, follow martha's instructions of cutting a 5 7/8" X 6 3/4" piece of felt.  but instead of folding the short ends together in the middle, fold the long ends (at least the tissue packs i bought fit better this way) into the middle.  measure the around your car's visor and then subtract 6 inches from it (the length of the tissue holder).  cut a piece of elastic (i used about 1 inch wide elastic) of that length.

tuck in one end of the elastic (about .5 inch) into one of the short sides, centering it. sew down the side.  do the same with the other end.  make sure the elastic is on the back side, not the side with the slit opening. you'll have to pull the elastic a bit out so that you don't sew over it in two places.

back view.

finished with some embellishments.

and a third one, beaded, but without elastic, just for kicks. 

on travel, airports, and ICN

be warned. this blog will have a grand total of zero photos.
zero. none. ZILCH.

i mean it.

i remember in the early 2000s when people wrote blogs mainly for their friends and families. i had such a blog, and i often wrote about mundane daily things, so ordinary i won't even bore you by listing them here now. these blogs rarely ever contained photos. flash forward a decade, and you find millions of blogs written for strangers, chock-full of images.

not only do i revert to an image-less entry, but i also digress....

because this is not today's topic.

today i want to talk about airports. if you haven't noticed by now, i love to travel. i travel at every chance i can (reasonably) get, and when i was still working, strategically mapping out the use of my generous vacation allowance was one of my favorite games. but like many other travelers, the love of travel is often tainted by airports and airport security. i dread the security line like you might dread kissing your aunt mildred- you think it's really gross, but it just can't be avoided.

don't get me wrong. i have no issues with the idea of my luggage being scanned (my body, though, is a different story). i get it, there are lots of crazy people in the world, some precautions have to be made. however, every time i go through one of these lines, i am disgusted by how unsanitary everything is.

first, i have to take off my shoes for flights to and from the USA, and walk on a dirty floor. gross. then, i have to put my shoes in a bin. a bin that people also put their laptops, jackets, and other personal items. which means... my personal items are going to bins where other people's dirty shoes have been. and i have no idea where their bacteria infested shoes have walked. my thoughts are consumed with this every time i go into one of these security lines... and once i am through, all i want to do is to disinfect everything that has touched one of these bins.

do you feel my pain?

i was mulling over this as i was preparing to go through the line at seoul, korea's ICN airport, when i noticed that they had two types of bins. shoe bins and everything else bins. i perked up. then i noticed a large, boxy, refrigerator-like container with transparent doors, with a sign that said "shoe disinfection" (or something like that). now i started to get excited. i took a closer look, and inside were rows of slippers. i looked again at the shoe bins sitting out. every bin had a pair of disinfected slippers for passengers to put on while they put their street shoes in the bin.

total love.

i believe this is the first airport i have ever flown through with such a smart, sanitary system. have you ever encountered such airport brilliance?

happy easter

my in-laws sent us a care package full of finnish goodies, including this:

it's an egg. 

right?

or... is it?

jewelry fix with a scouring pad

last year the husband purchased a couple pairs of earrings for me that i wear all the time.  unfortunately, as silver often does, i noticed that they were starting to tarnish. without thinking about it, i grabbed a silver polishing cloth... and discovered that it removes brushed finishes. was i supposed to know not to do that?  did you know?

oops. 

i guess i shouldn't have done that. 
i mentioned this at craft boston when i was speaking with bree richey designs, and they shared some most useful information on how to fix my mistake, without sending it to a jeweler or buying fancy supplies. 

scotch-brite.

so the last time i went to the grocery store,  i picked some up - technically a brand called pure power. 

i cut off a sliver and went to work. brush, brush, brush.

i tried taking before and after pictures, but wasn't able to capture the difference.  however, i can definitely tell the difference in person.  they aren't quite as beautiful as they were in their original state, but they are much improved. 

craft FAIL.

my standard weekday breakfast usually consists of one of the following: cereal and coffee, cereal and tea, oatmeal and coffee, oatmeal and tea, banana and coffee, banana and tea.  not a particularly exciting array of breakfast foods, but it does the trick, and i fill my foodie needs during other meals of the day.  however, for the last two three days, instead of my usual mundane regime, i have been eating chewy molasses cookies for breakfast instead. with coffee, of course.

you could say that i'm eating my feelings.  or just eating my craft.  either way, please don't judge me. too much.

since moving here, i've felt a little off, due to all the chaos, and everything else that comes to adjusting to a new city and home.  i still reach for the trash can under the kitchen sink, even though we no longer keep the trash can there.  i still look up the weather by our old houston zipcode before remembering that we're living in a city that's about 40 degrees colder.  most importantly and most disasterously though, is that my craft skills have been...unskilled.  generally speaking, i lump baking and crafting together under crafts (and often cooking too).  i am not that frequent of a baker, but i have always enjoyed it, and usually i am met with fairly successful results.  being sans-job and the apartment being mostly useable space, i decided to embrace my kitchenaid mixer a little more often.  i've been met with mediocre results.   the same thing has occurred with my crafts, things i have been working on haven't quite turned out the way i've hoped (remember the baby shoes?), even projects that should have been easy.

craft boston

on sunday, the husband and i made our way boston's seaport world trade center to visit craft boston.  the show runs twice a year, once in the spring and once in the winter.  while i would have hardly called it spring-like on sunday with temperatures still hovering in the 30s and low 40s, at least it was a sunny day, and the show was indoors.  something funny i noticed is, exactly a year ago, we visited the bayou city art festival in houston.  what are the odds?   anyway, the show had about 200 artisans and we easily spent a few hours admiring everyone's work.  it was incredibly hard to walk away without doing serious damage to our wallets, but i managed, even though it still hurts to remember all the beautiful items i had to leave behind.